The editors

Kou Aizhe: The short happy Antarctic summer ends too soon and is followed by a long winter.

Many scientific researchers return home to China at the end of summer as most Antarctic research can only be done in the summer months. Only a small number of staff are left at the research station for what is known as 越冬 ‘winter-over’.^[1] Cao Jianxi used to be one of the team members wintering over at the research station, responsible for ensuring that the research station operated normally during the winter months.

‘Wintering over’: A gruelling experience

Once we are wintering over, everyone’s workload is much lighter. Someone like me, who is in charge of the kitchen, only has to make sure meat and vegetables are brought in from the storeroom and ready for cooking the next day.

We rise much later in winter as the sun only rises after ten o’clock in the morning, when it is almost time for lunch. Between lunch and dinner, we have plenty of time to ourselves.

I’d often sit by my bed, wrapped up in a warm blanket to play online games or watch movies. There was a particular actress, I can’t remember whether I saw her on TV or in a movie, but I was very fond of her at that time, and thought her very beautiful.

She has very oriental features, with a delicate ‘melon-seed’ oval face. She appeared wearing a crimson veil and appeared against a red background.

I took a photo with my mobile phone and would often stare at it, my heart heavy with loneliness and the yearning for a companion.

Although there were other people at the station, our interactions were minimal. In this sort of closed environment, the longer we stayed together the more silent and withdrawn we became, with no desire to connect with anyone, just amusing ourselves alone in our rooms.

Those who are more extroverted, especially the older ones, seemed less affected by the isolation. The younger team members tend to be more quick tempered, and would ignore the others if they were in a bad mood.

At times an older team member would walk into the dining hall and, sensing the negative vibe, would attempt to lighten the mood by telling jokes or asking people how they were going.

But the strange thing is, they would get no response from the others. As you can imagine, under such circumstances, that made most team members felt even more depressed.

It was also common to see conflict among team members. I personally experienced this: as the period of isolation grew longer, the more my relationship with my direct superior deteriorated. At the start, we got along well because we were polar research centre co-workers.

But later, because of the nature of our working relationship, he made more demands on me than others. Sometimes it was over small things like cigarettes or alcohol. I would get annoyed and feel like he is mistreating me or that he wasn’t looking after me. As time went by our relationship worsened with every such incident.

As a result, my relationship with the station master deteriorated as well. Even when winter was over, we could not repair our relationship. In normal life, if we run into problems at work, we can always go home or go for a drink or a meal with friends after work to relieve our stress. But in the extreme conditions of the South Pole, that isn’t an option. We are always together. If something goes badly today, tomorrow we still have to continue working together. Frustrations build up and never go away.

Food

Kou Aizhe: In Antarctica, growing crops is strictly prohibited.^[2] All crops are considered ‘exotic species’ that risk damaging its unique environment. Of course, the harsh conditions in Antarctica are not conducive to growing crops either, so supplies of food and other necessities are completely dependent on infrequent transport links to the station.

The popular Chinese saying goes, ‘Food is the people’s heaven’. Even when they are at the ‘end of the world’, those stationed in the Antarctica are determined not to compromise on their enjoyment of food. It is at times like this when culinary creativity is at its most prolific.

My job as a manager at the research station means I am like the ‘housekeeper’. I manage all the storerooms, especially the kitchen store. Every day, I would go to the kitchen to prepare supplies, like alcohol, other drinks, rice and flour. Our dishes mostly consisted of dried goods from the north-east of China because they could be kept for a long period of time. It was rare to have green leafy vegetables. Usually we’d eat bean curd strips, seaweed and other dried goods that had to be soaked in water first.

Among twelve of us who stayed behind in the winter months, there was a chef by the name of Old Zhu. He used to be the main chef on board the [icebreaker and resupply ship] Xue Long.

Before each meal, one of us rang the bell outside the dining hall. Sometimes it was me, sometimes the chef himself or one of the kitchen hands, and then everyone would come to eat.

At the station, big steel trays were used for serving meals, which usually consisted of three dishes, such as chicken or black fungus stir fried with sliced pork belly, and a soup, typically egg-based with seaweed, which was vacuum packed; all we had to do was to steep it in hot water first.

We also had desiccated vegetables, but no matter what we did with them, they were flavourless.

Sometimes we would have barbeques outdoors using large steel plates and long iron skewers. Barbeques were fun, especially after the tide receded and lots of abalones were left stranded on the rocks. We would barbeque abalones on a large metal plate as if they were lamb on skewers. Those abalones were the best I have ever eaten – extremely tender.

When celebrating festivals or birthdays, we would prepare more dishes, sometimes a dozen or so, in smaller portions and served on white porcelain plates. We would lay them out on a table covered with a white tablecloth, plus flowers for decoration. The flowers were plastic, but it looked pretty.

To celebrate the birthdays of our teammates, Chef Zhu would also bake a cake. The station manager would pass a birthday card around for everyone to sign. On each card would be twelve signatures, making it something worth keeping.

On special occasions like the Mid-Autumn Festival, I would also make banners that read ‘China’s 22nd Antarctic Scientific Expedition Team at the Great Wall Station Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival’. I would print out the Chinese characters individually on A4-size sheets and pin them together on a scroll of red cloth to make a long banner.

End of winter

Kou Aizhe: The first time Cao Jianxi spent the winter at the polar research station, he had a calendar pinned up in his room and he would stare at it for ages every day, studying it minutely, counting down the days until his return home.

But as the end of wintering over drew nearer, Cao had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was dying to see his family and friends. Over and over, he’d imagine the scenes of meeting them all again in detail.

On the other hand, human society became like a beautiful dreamscape. The long separation from society instilled a sense of anxiety in Cao, who worried whether returning to a normal life would ever be possible.

After more than a year’s wait, the day finally came for Cao to finish wintering over.

When I was in Antarctica, I never thought I’d go back. But back in China, I found myself having difficulties adapting to society. Like a prisoner who has been released after a long jail term of more than a decade or do, I found it hard to get used to a life of freedom and was nostalgic for the prison environment.

After many months of trying to adapt, I decided to return to Antarctica. Society was a little hard to fit into.

Life and death

Kou Aizhe: In 2007, Cao Jianxi boarded the icebreaker Xuelong, to join China’s 24th Antarctic Scientific Expedition to the South Pole. The first destination was Zhongshan Station. If Cao’s first ‘wintering over’ at the Great Wall Station had only subjected him to mental anguish, venturing into the interior of Antarctica was a severe ordeal that tested both his body and spirit.

Zhongshan Station was the second scientific research station that China built in the Antarctic. It is located in East Antarctica and is 4,986 kilometres away from Great Wall Station, making the distance between the two research stations even greater than that from Shanghai to Urumqi. What’s more, the climate in Zhongshan Station is much harsher.

It was during the 24th Expedition that Cao had the most dangerous experience of his life.

In Antarctica, you never know where the danger lies until you come face to face with it. The further you travel into the interior, the more dangerous it becomes. Accidents are common, especially for those venturing onto the endless plateau of snow, ice and glaciers for the first time.

When the icebreaker Xuelong arrived at Zhongshan Station with our research team, we had to start unloading 10 to 20 nautical miles from the station. This is because the Xuelong could only drive through ice up to 1.1 metres thick. We had to use snowmobiles and sledges to transport our cargo from the vessel to the station.

This zone is notorious for its haphazard formation of ice sheets, resulting from huge blocks of old ice bonding together and refreezing. This makes the structure of the ice non-uniformly thick, with some places thick and others thin.

As a precaution, having two drivers (a pilot and a co-pilot) operate an oversnow vehicle is the norm. This boosts safety because in an emergency, one person can radio in a report.

At the time, a very experienced chief mechanic, Mr Xu Xiaxing, decided to drive an oversnow vehicle on his own, so as to allow the other members of the team to rest. He didn’t take a sledge, which signified it was an empty vehicle. We’d put caterpillar treads on it while it was still in the hold, and it was the best equipped of all the vehicles. The crane moved it from the hold onto the ice.

Mr Xu wanted to move the vehicle to another spot and began driving.

Our assistant expedition guide Wang Hailang was on duty in the control room of the Xuelong. He witnessed the whole episode. The vehicle began moving forward when it suddenly stalled and began spinning. Then, suddenly, it started sinking.

When Mr Xu discovered his oversnow vehicle had stalled, he thought all he had to do was pump the accelerator to get the vehicle to lurch forward, as he had done before. But this was a totally different situation: the area’s ice layer was too thin. Underneath, it was already broken into ice debris. The vehicle started sinking rapidly, as if the wheels were shovelling up ice from below.

When the oversnow vehicle first started sinking, Mr Xu didn’t panic. He still thought that hitting the accelerator would solve the problem by propelling it forward and freeing it from the ice. But before he realised it, the vehicle had sunk to a considerable depth and a stream of bubbles began to burst forth from its interior. Only then did terror enter his heart, and he thought of his family. He realised the peril he was in and feared this would be the end of him.

Water gradually flooded the car. He prepared to escape but couldn’t open any of the windows or its sunroof owing to the pressure of the water. Pushing open the door would be futile for the same reason.

However, the window on the driver’s side could slide back and forth. By chance, Mr Xu managed to push that window open. Water rushed into the car and completely flooded the interior.

He then tried to escape through the sunroof.

The sunroof was like that of a family car, except it was not able to open fully. It could only be cracked open to a 5- or 10-degree angle at most.

Mr Xu decided to stand on the vehicle’s middle console and push up as hard as he could to force the sunroof open. The connecting rod of the sunroof gave way completely, opening the only possible escape route for him.

He tried to float to the surface, but he continued to sink. His boots were caught.

Those boots were specially designed to withstand a temperature of around minus 30 degrees Celsius so they were extremely bulky and heavy. But he eventually managed to free himself from them. He’d used up almost all his energy and swallowed another mouthful of ice-cold sea water.

After he had made his escape from the sunroof, he swam upward with all his might, until he heard his head bump against the ice debris, and knew he’d reached the top. He raised his hand and ascertained he’d found the ice hole.

The rescue team still hadn’t reached him, but he climbed his way out onto dry ice all by himself. He managed to make two steps before collapsing.

As a result of this, all the work of the research team came to a temporary stop. Everyone was at a complete loss. The whole team’s spirit sank to an all-time low.

Return to Antarctica

Kou Aizhe: After his fourth expedition to Antarctica, Cao Jianxi resigned from the Polar Research Centre. Not long after, he moved to Australia and began a new phase of his life.

After leaving China, I didn’t think about returning to Antarctica. I threw myself into an entirely new life. I got married and devoted my time and energy to raising a family.

At first, I wasn’t nostalgic or keen to think about those days. Nor did I want to dig out old photos and videos. However, with the passing of time, I began thinking more and more of the memories of those events.

In Antarctica, under such harsh conditions, a small group of us still managed to work together using our own skills to complete our mission. There is a sense of camaraderie in having been through thick and thin together, akin to that of having been comrades-in-arms on a battlefield.

I feel like this deep connection is too precious to be discarded or forgotten. It is so rare in one’s life to have relationships built on shared experiences of life and death.

By chance, a friend asked if I was interested in working on board a cruise ship specialising in tours to Antarctica. The steep increase in the number of Chinese tourists in recent years has raised the demand for people like me, who know Antarctica and speak English and Chinese.

At first, I didn’t take this opportunity seriously, but when night came, I thought more deeply and got very excited. Things big and small that happened when I was living and working in Antarctica, the friendship and connection with teammates, started to play out in my mind. If I returned, I would be return to my old circles.

I felt an urgent desire to go back, a bit like how I felt the first time I was bound for Antarctica after college. But before I ventured back, the cruise company decided that I should travel to the Arctic a few times first. As a result, I visited Iceland and Greenland several times. Some six months later, I was finally on my way back to Antarctica.

When the cruise ship arrived at Antarctica, the sight of the snow-capped mountains and glaciers in the far distance made me extremely emotional, and tears welled in my eyes.

When I went ashore, I felt that I knew every rock and stone was familiar. I also ran into a teammate who once wintered over in the same year with me at the research station. He was very happy to see me and cooked some noodles for us. I felt extremely happy and excited. I really hadn’t expected that.

In that distant place, I returned to where I first started, as if some mystical power is at work, or perhaps this is just what is meant to be. When Heaven opens a door for me, I linger hesitantly at the doorway, but when I finally decide to cross the threshold, I keep going.

Notes from the translator

[1] 越冬 or ‘winter-over’ is a specific term used to denote the process by which researchers in the South Pole steel themselves to pass through the long and often difficult winters. It implies a degree of tenacity on the part of the researchers to adjust their way of living in the research centre to wait out the winter season.

[2] Many research stations in the South Pole have, however, set up hydroponic gardens in greenhouses for research purposes as early as 1902. By 2015 there were at least forty-six different facilities in Antarctica where researchers had grown plants at some time or another as scientific experiments. Matthew Bamsey, Paul Zabel, Conrad Zeidler et al., ‘Review of Antarctic greenhouses and plant production facilities: A historical account of food plants on the ice’, Paper presented at the 45th International Conference on Environment Systems, Bellevue, WA, USA, 12–16 July 2015: 1–37. Accessed 15 September 2023. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280738927_Review_of_Antarctic_Greenhouses_and_Plant_Production_Facilities_A_Historical_Account_of_Food_Plants_on_the_Ice

The post Loneliness, Death and Desolation: Why I Return to Antarctica Time and Again appeared first on The China Story.

One year later, as China turned its back from its iron fisted zero-COVID policy, traumatic memories of lockdowns, mandatory quarantines, and medics in white hazmat suits were quickly smothered by nauseating celebrations of the ‘magnificent, glorious and infallible’ Communist Party of China and its ‘outstanding and decisive victory in containing the epidemic’. Here at The China Story, we commemorate the first year anniversary of the Shanghai Lockdown by publishing a series of translations of letters sent to a popular Chinese language podcast StochasticVolatility 随机波动. Some of these letters were read out loud by the show’s hosts, three female media professionals Zhang Zhiqi, Fu Shiye and Leng Jianguo. Their voices as well as the individual voices behind these letters served as a source of warmth and comfort during those long days of isolation and chaos. The letters featured here also represent voices of what scholar and creator of The China Story Geremie Barmé calls ‘The Other China‘,  a ‘China of humanity and decency, of quiet dignity and unflappable perseverance.’

The Editors

In This Whirlpool of Chaotic Jumble, ‘Your World’ Is Also ‘My World’

Translated with an introduction by Peishan Yann

Translator’s Introduction

The COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai from April to June 2022 may seem remote for most people who only know about it from the news, which can convey the scale and magnitude of the lockdown, but not the pain it inflicted. For China’s biggest city of approximately 26 million people to descend into a full lockdown while the rest of the world is navigating away from it, is incomprehensible at best. Compounded by the lack of clear and transparent communication from the authorities and the redoubling of tough, senseless measures to contain people, Shanghai residents struggled through more than two months of turmoil with little recourse. Like other Chinese cities in lockdown, Shanghai came to a halt, but it was a halt like no other as China’s largest commercial engine ground to a stop, putting lives, livelihoods, and emotional and mental health at risk as the country stubbornly stuck to its zero-COVID policy, under which little else mattered.

In addition to the inconvenience and anxiety of being locked inside, and the fear of testing positive for the virus and being moved to a quarantine centre, the prolonged lockdown also prevented access to many daily necessities, including medicines, toilet paper, and even food. Hunger was real and immediate. Residents mostly relied on tuan gou 团购 or ‘community group-buying’ to procure daily essentials for entire residential compounds during the lockdown. These experiences have been brought to life by first-person accounts on various Chinese podcasts, including Stochastic Volatility 随机波动, which is hosted by three young women, who recently read out letters from Shanghai residents at breaking point. Listeners from mainly first-tier cities aged in their twenties to mid thirties found such downloadable podcasts that directly addressed their concerns deeply appealing, especially in long periods of isolation during the pandemic, when the intimacy and familiarity of the human voice became even more soothing and reassuring. Timely and lively discussions on the pandemic resonated with them, and they drew strength from them to bear the unbearable.

The following letter provides powerful insights into life during the lockdown. We hear about the discrimination suffered by nine male migrant workers crowded into a single rental unit when most tested positive for the virus, and their vulnerability in the face of their neighbours’ cold indifference and cruel criticisms. Another harrowing story is that of an eighty-eight-year-old woman crying out for help and being ignored by her residents’ committee as supplies of food and medicine ran critically low. But there are also glimmers of heart-warming kindness: younger residents looking out for their elderly neighbours and people feeding the stray cats in the longtang 弄堂 (‘laneway communities’).

Amid this whirlpool of chaos and uncertainty, people recorded their stories and the absurdities surrounding them. Their stories need to be heard, translated, and shared.

******

Dear Stochastic Volatility hosts, Zhiqi, Shiye, and Jianguo,

Most of the time, I’m inclined to assume the role of the listener and reader, very rarely willing to pick up my pen, and never have I voiced my opinions on a public platform. The power of language is all but weak. It’s such a heavy responsibility as well. I have no confidence I will be able to accurately express what I’ve seen in words. I’m even more scared that what I say will be misconstrued and others will get hurt. So, I’ve always just curled up inside my shell, unable to speak.

But living in Shanghai and being a part of what may be the greatest absurdity of the twenty-first century, there is always a flag waving from a small corner in my room and that flag says, ‘Cry out!’,[1] protesting my silence and my failure to record what I see. So, I thought, why not write something for the Stochastic Volatility’s letterbox, this semi-private and semi-public space.

This is the fifth week of working from home. Objectively speaking, life hasn’t been too bad. I have a source of income and know how to find information online. So, access to daily necessities is not a problem. But the familiar structure of my daily life is crumbling bit by bit. Moreover, I’ve a pessimistic inkling that life will never return to ‘normal’.

What I’m seeing is the weakness of the individual, and this lockdown has also fully exposed what lies beneath this weakness — the absurdity that we once considered ourselves unrelated individuals.

I live in an old longtang in downtown Shanghai, an alleyway community with a severely ageing population. Half of its residents are younger people from outside Shanghai, the other half elderly native Shanghainese. Until a month ago, these were like two parallel worlds. I feel ashamed that I have never attempted to remove the filter from my eyes to really observe the people who live around me, the human beings who are closest to me in the physical sense, until a month ago.

When the invisible barriers built around a ‘normal life’ were shattered by lockdown orders, the world revealed its original shape — real people of myriad and enormous differences, all equally fallen into this whirlpool of chaos. There is no longer a distinction between ‘your world’ and ‘my world’. Everybody is enclosed within the same fortress walls in the same physical space, in a closed circuit without an exit switch. All I can do is to record the little stories that happen in this closed circuit.

The Ones Who Lost Their Voice

There are nine of them in one unit, seven of whom have tested positive. The Neighbourhood Committee has not disinfected their apartment, given them supplies or conducted PCR testing. Neighbours, please take extra care to avoid them, they are going to break out at any moment!

This message suddenly appeared in my neighbourhood WeChat group.

This is the first time that I had become aware of this group of residents in my neighbourhood. Their cramped living conditions are unsuitable for self-isolation. They were not relocated to quarantine centres quickly enough and have cross-infected each other. Finding themselves in dire straits, they were robbed of a voice to cry out for help. I do not know what they look like or what they do for a living, but I do know they have been blindly condemned by the community as tenants engaged in illegal overcrowding.

Someone asked in the chat: ‘Nine people in a single unit. How could they possibly like Shanghai that much? Shared rentals are such a big problem, just wait until the pandemic is over, I’ll dob them in.’ Another person said: ‘So many positive cases and they still haven’t been shepherded out to quarantine centres. Their rubbish is piling up on the corridor day by day. What are others living in the same building supposed to do?’ Someone else commented: ‘Everyone steer clear of them, they are coming downstairs to dump their rubbish. Rubbish accumulated from nine people. It already stinks!’ Still, one person observed: ‘They have not joined any tuangou, the Neighbourhood Committee has not given them any supplies either, these boys must be starving.’

As for these nine people, they had no collective voice. They did not join any community group-buying or ask anyone for help. Neither did they respond to any suspicions or accusations. No-one knows why they came to Shanghai to live in such an overcrowded rental unit. No-one knows about their living conditions, or what help they need the most right now. They are simply labelled ‘tenants in shared rental with COVID-19’ — a collective identity that has been tossed out into the open for criticism and then dismissed.

Working by my window, I could occasionally hear shouts from the residential compound. A cry to the vast empty city, absorbed into the incessant rain that marks the change from spring to summer. I think, perhaps this is the only sound they can make, the only one I can hear.

Please Help Me!

They said that the lockdown would only last for four days. I only stocked up on some vegetables which cannot last long. The medication for a bedridden elderly person with dementia is running low. And my domestic helper has only two days’ worth of medicine for her high blood pressure. I rang the Neighbourhood Committee this morning and they said they were busy but would ring me back in the afternoon. I waited until past 3pm and still they did not make contact. I rang countless times afterwards but the number was always busy; this went on until 6pm. The two of them will die without their medicine. I am 88 years old myself and have difficulties with mobility. I’ve been on tenterhooks all day and can’t sleep at night. Will someone please help me!

This was another message from my neighbourhood WeChat group, posted by an eighty-eight-year-old resident. Police officers and volunteers in the community have since made contact with her and provided help. Hopefully she and her family can pull through this rough patch.

In the Weibo community page ‘Help Needed for Shanghai Pandemic’上海疫情求助, there are many similar cries for urgent assistance. I do not know how many of these pleas have been attended to, or how many of them have been swept away into this vast sea of information. Nor do I know the number of people out there who have no idea how or where to seek help.

I have no idea what I could do to help. In our residential compound, some concerned neighbours have left notices with their contact details on the ground floor of those apartment blocks mostly inhabited by senior citizens, so that those in need could reach out.

I met an old lady with silver hair when I was on my way to pick up some supplies. We stood by the side of the road watching a little black kitten eat. I asked if she had enough food at home and if she needed anything. She smiled sweetly and replied that she has enough. Everything is fine and she only wanted to come out for a stroll and see how her elderly neighbours were doing. She said that having a young person stop and show her concern has made her very happy. The old lady declined my material assistance. I am not sure if she was only trying to reassure me when she said she has enough to eat but I do hope my show of concern brought her some emotional solace.

In this great chaos, I have come to believe in the resilience of the people and have witnessed sparkles of kindness glimmering through this calamitous darkness. And yet, none of this should have happened in the first place.

Stray Cats

In my longtang there live around ten stray cats. In normal times, old grannies will come out and feed them at fixed mealtimes. The cats have their own food bowls and territory. But since all this huge uncertainty has swept over us, how are these stray cats supposed to live?

A week ago, I noticed their food supply had been completely cut off. Previously proud and uninterested in engaging with people, they started circling me, mewing loudly. It occurred to me that the apartment blocks where the cat-feeding grannies live were all under lockdown, and these cats had been without food for nearly a week. I opened my delivery apps and was relieved to find that while all the takeaway food businesses catering for humans had stopped operation, a pet store is still selling cat food and could deliver. Proper cat food was out of stock of course, but limited titbits and canned food were still available. I managed to snatch up two weeks’ worth of supplies. From then on in the lockdown, I took on a new routine of feeding the stray cats.

I must admit, human beings are very selfish animals. When I discovered that it was still within my power to do something for the cats downstairs, my anxiety and guilt seemed to have lifted a little. For all the talk about kind intentions, all I wanted was to avoid falling into the category of ‘not doing anything to help’. What I did really was merely pick the easiest task rather than the much more difficult ones that would require more time, effort, and commitment, such as becoming a community volunteer or speaking up on behalf of those who were suffering.

Later, I discovered that in the cats’ bowls, proper cat food was mixed in occasionally with the canned food I had provided. It seems there are others like me who are trying to not let the cats go hungry. I hope that neither the people nor cats living in my longtang go hungry.

I’ve written all this and still I have no idea how I am going to get through this spring. Perhaps spring has already slipped by. What I know is that such trivial stories as I have told here will continue to unfold in a ceaseless cycle, just as we will continue to experience fear, anger, despair, and helplessness. But I hope those who witness these stories don’t lose the courage to record them.

I end my letter with these lines from Baudelaire’s L’Avertisseur:

Whatever he may plan or hope,

Man does not live for an instant

Without enduring the warning

Of the unbearable Viper

From L’Avertisseur by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks, in Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)

Shanghai, 14 April 2022

Mesmalheurs

Notes

[1] The writer is most likely referring to a collection of essays by the famous essayist Lu Xun, A Call to Arms 呐喊, literally meaning to ‘Cry out!’. Lu took to writing to expose the ugliness of reality in the hope of awakening the spirit of his fellow citizens and bringing about hope for the future.

The post Letters From Lockdown appeared first on The China Story.